Rituals and writing.

I worked at home yesterday. You might imagine that, being a research scientist, that is somewhat difficult to do. No, I didn't bring the beakers and bunsen burners and pipettors and colored liquids home with me. That would be a lot to carry, not very safe, and also probably illegal. No, I just brought a stack of papers and my computer. I was trying to write a paper.

I enjoy writing, as evidenced by this very blog. English was my minor. I took mostly writing classes, and I had a better GPA in my minor then I did in biology, my major. In hindsight, I realize I probably picked the wrong field to make a living in, but at the time I just thought I wanted a challenge. However, writing a research paper is a bit different from creative writing. First of all, you are definitely not encouraged to be creative. Second of all, really all you are doing is summarizing your data, and then making a pitch. You are trying to convince the scientific community that you have in fact proven your hypothesis and that your interpretation of the data is the correct one. And thirdly, I will write the paper and then hand it in to my boss, who will proceed to tear it apart and reorganize everything until the final draft resembles nothing I began with and it would have been far less time consuming and stressful for him to write it himself in the first place. But he won't do that. This is just the Way It Is.

So. Ever since college I've had this ritual around my writing. First, I would clean my room. Then, get a big cup of soda. Remember those large plastic cups that you used to carry around to the dining hall, because the glasses they provided were miniature size? I'd fill those up with ice and soda, and sit it next to me on the desk. There it would stay, because once I started writing I wouldn't stop long enough to drink it, so the next day I would always dump out the warm flat soda and wipe up the wet ring the cup left on my desk. I'd get all my books and papers and spread them out. Turn off the ringer on my phone. Put a sign on my door "Do not disturb". Turn on the music- nothing that might inspire me to sing along, but something to drown out all the dorm noise. Review the assignment. And then I would sit. And I would write. And I wouldn't stop until I was done.

I could usually get a paper out in a few hours, and I would never ever rewrite. Partly because when I first started college we didn't have computers, we had typewriters. I had a fancy typewriter with an erase feature, but it was only good for fixing typos. My roommate had a really fancy typewriter that would display one or two sentences on a screen before typing it out onto the paper. Man did I want one of those!(By the time I graduated I did have a PC, with DOS and a dot matrix printer. We even had email by then, and I remember how exciting it was when my friends at other schools got email too.) Also because whenever I changed anything I'd always get a poor grade, and the comments would always indicate that my first draft would have been better. Just like taking a test: trust your instinct, your first response is probably right. (I don't think that carries true for motherhood, unfortunately. Laughing when Juliette misbehaves- even when it is really funny- is not a good way to bring her in line.)

This technique has always worked well for me. (Except with that one professor in college who was obviously too narrow minded to appreciate that I had my own voice and style.) (She was also the only female professor I had in any of my college writing classes.) (Also, my high school Expository writing teacher didn't like me much, and she was female.) (Is that significant somehow?) I even wrote my Ph.D thesis this way, although it did take me more then a couple of hours. (My thesis committee was all male. They all liked my writing.)

So after three days of trying to sit at my desk at work and write this paper, three days in which I have written daily blog entries, found a bunch of new blog sites to read, discovered the fun of YouTube, taken two hour lunches and finished reading my most recent book, I finally remembered why I started my little ritual to begin with. Especially now, there are just too many distractions.

Wednesday is a good day- the girls get picked up by their grandparents, so I didn't even have to shower and dress. Greg was in NYC for the day and even the dog was gone (running around in the big yard at Nonna's, with Cosette.) After watching Tuesday night's episode of Dancing with the Stars (who got kicked off last night?), taking a long hot shower (such a luxury) and relishing the absolute quiet that surrounded me (it isn't often that I get to enjoy such solitude), I sat down at my computer to write.

An hour later, I was done. (It's a short paper.)

One stinking hour. Three days in lab twiddling my thumbs over one hour worth of work.

This morning, when Greg sat down at the desk, he noticed the organized and clean state it was in, and asked "What, were you supposed to be writing something?"

That man knows me too well.